urbanresearch

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 30, @05:56PM
from the peer-to-peer-sneakernet dept.
Okian Warrior writes "Aram Bartholl is building a series of USB dead drops in New York City. Billed as 'an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space,' he has embedded USB sticks as file cache devices throughout the city. Bartholl says, 'I am "injecting" USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and data.' Current locations (more to come) include: 87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot), Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo), 235 Bowery, NY (New Museum), Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St), and West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)"

If you're walking around bustling New York City, it's probably not with an open laptop. But if you were... you might notice the five USB flash drives that Aram Bartholl installed into walls and columns around the city. The small ports wait for someone to walk by, plug in a laptop, and drop off or pick up some files.

As part of his residency at Eyebeam, Aram Bartholl sealed five USB flash drives into the walls of several New York City buildings, such as the New Museum, Eyebeam and the Union Square subway station, allowing anyone with a laptop to plug in and share whatever they want. "'Dead Drops' is an anonymous, offline, peer-to-peer file-sharing network in public space," writes Bartholl on his site.

We can't imagine that they'll last too long, though, before getting filled up with illicit porn, indie band demo albums and terrible poetry. Check out the full list of the drives' locations at Bartholl's site.

By Sean Hollister posted Oct 30th 2010 9:19PM Back when the walls had ears, spies would store their information in a hidden cache and pass along the location via code. Now, a New York City artist is doing the same with USB flash drives, five of which he's already injected into the city's brick walls. While there some obvious logistical reasons we'd avoid using his creation (not to mention worries about AutoRun in older PCs) we'll definitely keep the idea in mind for Engadget informants who are particularly paranoid about their anonymity. See the first five drives' not-so-secret locations in photos at our source links.

Aram Bartholl, also known as the man behind Speed Show, has launched a new project in New York City which is part of his Eyebeam residency. Under the name of ‘Dead Drops’, he created an anomymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space by ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into publicly accessible walls, buildings and curbs.

What would you do if you saw a USB head sticking out of a wall? Dead Drops is a new offline peer-to-peer file sharing project by Aram Bartholl. Anonymous users can find the USB flashdrives in public spaces (5 so far in NYC) and download and share files. Take that Limewire!

Have you ever had the urge to randomly dump a massive amount of files in a public location so that any passerby could share in the fun? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But a new EYEBEAM project being conducted by NYC resident Aram Bartholl is pretty cool. He’s essentially running around downtown New York and installing flash drives, called “Dead Drops” into anything and everything — walls, curbs, posts, etc. The idea is that people are to share random files with one another, offline and on the go.

The concept is pretty cool to think about. Though I’m not too sure just strolling up to some random flash drive jutting out of the wall and then hooking it into my computer is the safest thing to do. Nevertheless, it’s a cool social/tech concept. Any NYC residents run into any of these “Dead Drops” yet?

Step inside for a few shots of what these Dead Drop stations look like…